SELWESKI: Fire Chief Obama blowing smoke on sequester cuts

When I was a young reporter absorbing the intricacies of local government while covering Washington, Bruce and Ray townships for The Romeo Observer, I quickly realized that, in many ways, the most powerful official in these communities was the local fire chief.

Dressed in full uniform, the fire chief would appear before his township board to warn against budget cuts in the fire department, or to criticize board opposition to funding new fire equipment and trucks, or to offer calamitous predictions in response to an attempt to block a fire millage proposal from making its way to the ballot.

Officials in townships that had a few two-story buildings were told by the chief that they absolutely needed a ladder-truck to handle fires in elevated places. The fire chief would slyly warn that any proposed budget cuts or restrictions for his department could bring alarming consequences.

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“If only one life is lost …” they would say.

Well, in 2013, let me introduce you to Fire Chief Barack Obama.

Obama’s political tactics in the wake of the sequester cuts is straight out of the fire chief’s playbook – spell out doomsday scenarios and appeal to the public by claiming that budget cuts will have a dramatic impact on their lives.

In his bid to demonize the $85 billion in sequester cuts that Republicans allowed to take place the president is desperately attempting to portray the 2.4 percent reductions as catastrophic.

The countless criticisms over the cancellation of White House tours for the public are almost instantly legendary. Obama’s false claim that Capitol janitors would receive pay cuts has received considerable publicity. And Education Secretary Arnie Duncan’s phony assertion that teachers across the nation were hit with pink slips also generated considerable blowback in the press.

But other evidence has surfaced to indicate that the Obama administration is flailing around in an attempt to portray sequestration as much worse than it is. This is not simply a case of a lack of prioritization.

In fact, it appears that the White House has criticized attempts by the bureaucracy to mitigate the effect of the cuts. For political reasons, some officials allegedly have demanded that administrators forego any adjustments in order to guarantee that the funding reductions are as painful as Obama promised.

Napolitano claimed that delays for travelers were particularly acute at some of the nation’s biggest airports -- in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago. The DHS secretary asserted that lines at security checkpoints were 150 to 200 percent longer than usual. But fact-checking reporters found that those claims were not only false, the airports were operating at a normal pace.

Napolitano also had to answer for a decision to go forward with a $50 million contract to provide new uniforms for airport screeners just days before the sequester hit. In addition, the DHS also was forced to admit that in February, in anticipation of a sequestration nightmare, it let loose 2,200 illegal immigrants that were held in detention.

The Pentagon made a similar high-profile move, cancelling the deployment of a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf region in order to save money. To draw attention to sequestration, the military brass are selectively choosing cuts that will generate maximum public attention.

At the same time that special appearances by the Blue Angels and other elite flying squadrons have been cancelled, swimming pools, golf courses and bowling alleys will continue to operate on Army bases.

The Agriculture Department warns that food inspections will suffer dangerous cutbacks. Yet, the USDA is seeking to hire three “insect production workers” to help grow bollworms in Phoenix. Apparently these bollworms help protect the cotton crop.

Worse yet, two USDA trips, one to California’s wine country, were in the works as sequestration hit.

Conference-goers were promised “special guest chefs (that) will turn donated local agriculture products into tasty dishes to sample with exceptional local wines, brews and spirits.”

To be fair, the federal government spent $340 million on conferences for employees in 2012. That is less than 1 percent of sequester total.

Meanwhile, at Eric Holder’s Justice Department, where 115,000 employees at all levels have received furlough notices – meaning they could face one unpaid day per week for 22 weeks -- the agency is simultaneously advertising for several new law librarians at annual salaries of up to $115,000. College interns that answer phone calls and file documents are paid $18.97 an hour.

Personally, I consider that a slap in the face.

In Michigan, the nation’s Capital of Concessions, I doubt that federal workers experiencing unpaid furlough days for a few months will receive any sympathy from Mitten State workers.

Real budget reductions, pay cuts, and benefit cutbacks have become commonplace for government workers in this state.

I suspect Macomb County workers who are in their fourth consecutive year of furloughs feel no pity for federal employees who are finally receiving a dose of reality.

What the clueless congressmen in Washington fail to grasp is a basic, relatively painless solution to budget deficits that has worked wonders for Macomb County during a period of dramatic drops in property tax revenues.

By eliminating positions through attrition, or delaying the filling of vacancies for 90 or 120 days, the county has righted the ship.

Yet, according to a series of reports by The Washington Times, on the first regular workday that the sequester took effect, more than 400 new jobs were posted online by federal agencies. Many of these jobs could and should have been deferred but the gamesmanship within the bureaucracy prevents fiscal reality from taking hold.

Administrators have become so artful in writing mushy job descriptions that virtually every federal job can be labeled as critical to an agency’s “core mission.” Even interns who answer phones.

The cancellation of White House tours has become a rallying point for every Obama critic from coast to coast. The response has become typically, ridiculously partisan. Fox News has apparently reported 163 times on the end-of-tours issue since it was announced March 5.

In the end, we will probably discover that certain sequester cuts hurt the poor and the federal safety net that protects them. True cuts inevitably cause pain.

But it seems fairly obvious that Fire Chief Obama is guilty of crying fire in a crowded theater.